Dear Mick: Thank you for your moving piece about Heath Ledger. The two scenes from "Brokeback Mountain" that I carry with me are the one in the alley that you mentioned and the one at the end with the shirt, when Ennis expresses not only grief but also a life of lonely repression.

Dear Adam: I knew that others in the media would take care of the senseless parts. One thing that got me sick was the station (not in the Bay Area) that carted out excerpts from a 2005 interview Ledger did with a local reporter. Ledger's fidgeting and an open wine bottle in his room were offered as evidence of something terribly wrong with the actor. The footage revealed quite a sight: Here were two men talking, one sensitive and one callous, one genuine and one phony, one alive and one dead in life. A quick cut to the present and there's the dead one, still talking about the death of the alive young man. It made me feel sorry for both of them, because I've been in that reporter's shoes. Once I interviewed a TV star as one in a steady stream of reporters who each got 10 minutes to work with. After that, I felt like a prostitute after Fleet Week. In this case, the reporter was probably encouraged to find a local angle, and he did. It's demeaning to all concerned, but Ledger gets the last laugh, because people will still be watching "Brokeback Mountain" when all the jackals and parasites have followed him into the ground.

Dear Mick: Since so many trailers condense the entire movie into 30 seconds, do you avoid them before seeing a movie? My favorite movie experiences seem to have been when plot and genre were unexpected.

Michael Sharo, Sausalito

Dear Michael: I avoid trailers, but only to save time. They go on forever these days. But I agree that it's best to know very little about a movie going in. I saw "No Country for Old Men" having completely forgotten it was a Coen brothers movie. I saw "The Departed" without knowing it was a Martin Scorsese film and "Cinderella Man" without knowing it was by Ron Howard. A little more than 17 years ago, I saw "Godfather III" without having any idea that the daughter was played by the director's daughter. In every case, I think my judgment benefited from having no preconceptions, and I ended up enjoying each movie more because of it.

Hey Mick: The words "actor," "performer," "director," "writer" and "cinematographer" are gender neutral, so why do award shows split the acting categories into genders? Why not just best actor and best supporting actor? Lots of those female-identifying words have fallen by the wayside, so why not "actress"?

Hey Charles: Meryl Streep competes with other women, not with men, for roles. That distinction can't be made for cinematographers, lighting designers, writers or directors. "Actress" hasn't fallen by the wayside because 500 years of practice have found it useful and because there is no stigma attached to the term, since the history of actresses is at least as exalted as that of actors. It's not as if women are trying to break into a man's profession and finding themselves being condescended to by terminology. Thus, in this case, there's really no political reason or social good to be served by expunging a benign and perfectly useful word from the language.

Dear Mr. LaSalle: I think you are in love with yourself and your highfalutin gobbledygook critiques. With that said, I still take your recommendations.

Robert Polniak, Richmond

Dear Mr. Polniak: Well, that's nice. (I take what I can get.) {sbox}

To hear Ask Mick LaSalle with commentary, trivia and lots of extras, download his podcast at sfgate.com/podcasts.